This Christmas its about time Lora & I paid a visit to my brother Mark in Atlanta, GA. He's lived there for over fifteen years after marrying a local lady, Robbie, and becoming a very successful business man.
Before we left for foreign lands, Lora & I travelled down to Harrow to go for a meal with my sister Brenda, her Other Half, Francisco and her daughter, my niece, Natalie. Natalie's a bit bigger than the other pictures we've got here of her. (others)
We had a meal in The Orchard in Ruislip. Nice food, good service. Could have done with a larger table.. Adam came over from Welsh Wales especially so he could see us this year. Lora persuaded them to serve her a Dom Pedro (ice cream plus whiskey).
Quick video of the table (434kb)
We were woken up at 6am by a god-almighty explosion. This was the oil depot at Hemel Hempstead exploding, 20 or more miles away. Cor. Glad I drove down yesterday cos they closed the M1 from junction 6 to junction 10 . That would have been a fun back-road jaunt. Well, you can read all about that on the bbc's website, all I can tell you is that the explosion was rather loud.
Right. This flight is a piece of cake. A measely 8 or 9 hours. Just a fly-speck of a flight.
We do a "Self-Service" check-in at Gatwick. This saves about an hour and half of queueing, all fine and good by me and made Lora's feet happy.
Lora gets her bag checked over and an offending item (nail scissors) confiscated by the gentleman. No worries, we can get nail scissors anywhere.
I buy some books and a travel-adaptor. I resist buying anything nice in duty free; it's nearly Christmas and you can guarantee that I'll buy myself something that Lora's already bought me..
A "Jumbo Breakfast" or three in the bar-and-cafe and we're ready for anything. Although I gather that the Jumbo Breakfast supposedly didn't include any elephant at all..
As we trot up to the gate, Dad's hand luggage gets checked too, and as his hearing is not the best its ever been he can be a little infuriating to a person who doesn't speak up :-)
I like the Boeing 777. Its a nice plane. The individual screens in the headrests. The fact that its only three-people across the middle so both Lora and Dad can have an aisle seat. Only problem is that the Controls for the TV unit are just where you want to rest your elbows..
Oh, the little head-rests that pop forwards from the seats - brilliant!
A good lunch. I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I liked it - except maybe the Dollars that Charlie found, I could cope with the Wonka Family back-story cos the rest was so good.)
Read most of The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes. Shaping up to be a good little series.
The Quick Snack that you get just before you land was, okay I suppose. There was a Fruity Flapjack which made up for the stiffness of the bun.
Landing was good. Immegration was, better than it could have been. And my Esteemed Father was disappointed when they didn't want his finger prints or picture - he's too old!
Mark picked us up in his new Honda CRV, lots of space inside and rather different to his usual ride (he appears to be collecting Buick Reattas...)
We half-unpack then we trip out for a Pizza. The place we wanted to go was shut (on a Sunday evening meal time!) so we end up at the old favourite Mellow Mushroom.
Two times three-quarters of a pizza later and we're back home and flagging. We watch a Law & Order and then call it a day.
This would be an easy day if it wasn't that the Cleaners were due. So we have to leave the house. Mark & Robbie are working and I've only drive one mile so far - so we decide to go for a walk.
Before we go we have a try at photographing some of the birds in the garden. Mark's garden works very well for attracting birds but not too well at letting the people inside take pictures. Some of these may seem a little blurred or out of focus. Its 'cos they are!
There's some new sidewalk along Osborne, so we take a walk that Mark hasn't even taken. Along Osborne to Peachtree. We pop into the first thing we come to (a petrol station) and, after some trouble describing it, purchase some instant coffee for Lora, she doesn't want to make real coffee all the time...
Bricks (218kb) (I'm wrong; these are actual brick houses)
We have a cup of coffee in Nut And Berry's (a healthfood shop believe it or not) and the wander back home.
This ended up as a two-hour walk. Which was nearly enough time for the cleaners to finish!
Lora & Dad had an afternoon snooze and I started work on this..
Videos
Evening meal was a White Chilli; white beans, chicken, cheese; basically a white chilli.
Quick trip to The Mall (well one of the Malls) to look for some Jacks for Dad and a clock for Robbie. Mark attempts to purchase some radio-controlled F1 cars (a Williams and a McLaren; nice weight to them, nice detailing) but managed to resist/be resisted.
Spent a lot of the day fighting with Marks wireless network. Ended up "borrowing" next doors unsecured one to download the latest Broadcom software for my laptop. Finally get myself a full-speed 11g connection to The World by about 10pm. I can't get my PSP to connect - not a great loss.
Tired now.
Toilet paper. Widescreen. I mean like the aspect ratio of the sheets is the wrong way round.
Light switchs - push the top to turn the light on rather than push the bottom.
Car indicator lights are Red rather than Orange.
Butter comes in Sticks half the size of our blocks - 1"x1"x4"
Top Loader washing machines and Front Loader dryers.
Supermarkets don't sell alcohol - you go to a Package Shop for that. (A Package Shop is not quite an Off-License)
A good 95% of the things in the supermarket don't look like ours. I mean in an NZ supermarket (or even a South African one) the *things* you buy may not have *exactly* the same labels as in a UK supermarket, but the *things* are pretty much the same. Here; the fruit is different; the veg is different; even Kellogs do a completely different range of goods. The "Ingredients" section, well, that bears very little resemblance. All in all, its different.
Chip-And-Pin is not in evidence, and doesn't seem to be a goal. Europe and Australasia seem to think its a good idea but not a sign of it over here. (Magnetic strips! Yuk!)
You should all know about "Turn Right On Red" yes? If the traffic lights are Red and you're tuning right, you don't need to wait for them to change you can just go when you think its safe. I think this is because they don't have roundabouts - we'd rather have a roundabout than install traffic lights. They'd rather install lights then do anything else to a junction.
Don't get me started on Random White Lines On The Road...
(Someone find me Raspberry Coke outside of NZ please!)
We have video as well as stills. You'll need an appropriate player, such as quicktime (or the appropriate Real Player plug in) to play these .mov/.3gp files. The .movs are converted from .3gp files using Quicktime pro. The filesize is disturbingly similar so if you have problems you either need the latest quicktime or you'll still need to grab the Nokia media player (here is a link). Under Linux I've not been able to get sound, but the video portion will play (in xine and mplayer).
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